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Staxel Reporter – Issue #22

Hi everybody, in this issue of the Staxel Reporter we’re going to talk about the new starter farm and have a look at the new in-game clothing objects.

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New Starter Farm

Up until this point, whenever you join a fresh Staxel world you’ve been thrown into a very flowery wilderness. Not anymore though, as we’ve just added the ‘starter farm’! I’m going to talk a bit about what that is exactly. Quick note first, the new farm isn’t in the release build just yet. It will be soon though!

You now begin the game on a starter farm. It has a good amount of land, but it’s very overgrown. It’ll take some work to clear the land to make space for your crops, barns, pens and so on.

You also begin with a small home. It’s pretty run down, so it’s up to you to show it some love and fix it up! It looks like the garden needs a bit of work too. Best grab your tools!

You’ll certainly need to do some cleaning up and repairs. The house comes with very basic furnishings but not much else. It would be a good idea to get stuck in with farming as soon as you can so you have the funds to furnish your new home further, and perhaps expand it!

With this home you’ll be starting with the bare essentials. It comes with a bedroom that overlooks the ground floor, a small kitchen, a catalogue station and some storage units.

It’s worth mentioning the design of the starter farm might be changed every so often as we add more features and get closer to our vision for Staxel. A bathroom might be a good idea actually…

Well, that’s about it for the starter farm. I hope you like what you see, and there’s still plenty more to come!

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New Clothing System

Currently, clothing is just changed on the character creator screen… that’s it. We’re currently working on a new system so that clothing pieces are now actual items in-game!

So now clothing pieces are real objects you can place in the Staxel world. We want the player to be able to build a wardrobe unique to them, or perhaps try and collect every clothing piece! That’d prove to be quite a challenge though, as we plan to have a huge variety of clothes.

There will be numerous ways for you to get new clothing. You could buy them from the local clothes shop, get some new clothes as a reward for completing a favour for a villager, recieve them as a gift, or trade with your friends!

The clothing system is still a work in progress but it’s a feature we’re very excited about. There’s a lot of room for creativity and we’ve got plenty of ideas for stylish new clothing sets which you’ll start to see trickling into the game soon. We’re even thinking of adding a mannequin object sometime in the future for you to display your favourite outfits on.

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That’s it for this issue of the Staxel Reporter. You can grab ‘Staxel – Seedling Edition’ at www.playstaxel.com/store.

Thanks for reading!

–EGadd

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Staxel Reporter – Issue #21

Hey everyone, in this issue of the Staxel Reporter we update you on how Minecon went, and give you a tour of our Staxel village.

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Back from Minecon!

As some of you may know, we were invited to show Staxel off at Minecon! This year’s Minecon was held in California, which was a big trip for the team members who went. I thought this would be a perfect chance to give you all an idea of how our experience was.

The three of us who went to Minecon were me (EGadd), Bart and Razz. Bart set up the booth, which turned out great! Also, we got assigned a green-coloured booth. We don’t know if it was randomly given to us or if they chose it to go with our game, but it was definitely the perfect colour for Staxel.

We had plenty of gamers (and even some non gamers) from all ages trying out Staxel. They gave us awesome feedback, and plenty of compliments too! Bart jotted down pages worth of notes for us to address post-Minecon, which we’re already working through and making nice progress.

Character creation still needs work, but it was definitely a hit with the kids!

All in all it was a fantastic experience. Having the chance to actually watch people play Staxel is a very enlightening part of the development process. It gave us all lot of feedback on what we’re doing right, and what needs improving so we’ve arrived back with a clearer idea of what needs focusing on and how to develop certain features further.

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Tour of Our Minecon Village

The team built a mockup of a very small village for the gamers at Minecon to play through. Right now in Staxel you’re not spawning in an existing village, you’re just thrown into the wilderness. The plan is you’ll be starting with a run-down farm in a small village, and it’ll be your job to revitalise the farm and turn a profit.

I took a few pics of the mock up village showing an example of a more successful farm in a very small village, let’s have a look.

This house is a moderate size. The kind the player will be starting with will be much smaller and more of a fixer-upper. For example, your garden will be filled with weeds, maybe some windows will need replacing, cobwebs need removing and more odd jobs for you to take care of along those lines.

Here’s a large barn we built for the larger animals, and a little enclosure for the chickens! We’re not sure right now if the player will be starting with a barn or if they will have to build one themselves.

A partial look at the front field. We planted assorted veggies to show the players at Minecon some of the variety they can expect from crops.

The main straight that goes between some stores and houses. It climbs up the cliff to lead to a large inn and another house. There’s also an abandoned mine before the turning which you can see in the pic.

Here’s the inn and house that have been built on the upper layer of the village. The inn has a great view of the town and farm!

We were wrapping up taking the pictures when it started raining, so we decided to get an early morning fishing shot!

That about sums up the village we built! It’s a very small village compared to what will be generating in the future, but it does give you a rough idea of the game we’re envisioning. I hope you enjoyed the pictures!

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That’s it for this issue of the Staxel Reporter. You can grab ‘Staxel – Seedling Edition’ at www.playstaxel.com/store.

Thanks for reading!

–EGadd

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Staxel Reporter – Issue #20

Hey everyone, in this issue of the Staxel Reporter we announce we’re going to Minecon again this year and talk about the improved cooking system.

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We’re Going to Minecon – Again!

It’s that time of year again where lovers of voxels everywhere come together to see what’s new, ask questions and get answers, meet up with friends from around the world and generally have a fun time. That’s right, it’s Minecon 2016!

Last year we went to London for Minecon 2015. It was an opportunity for us to set up a booth in the Indie zone and finally let people have their first look at the game and get some valuable feedback in real time.

It was great to see Staxel so well received and we took a lot back from the experience which really helped us focus on the direction we wanted to take Staxel in.

It’s now a year later and we’re readying up to do it all over again in California! All we had to show last year was a creative mode and our community built server, but this time around we’ve got a lot more features to show off, a brand new server build set on a farm, and an in-depth display of some of the more important gameplay components in Staxel. Farm animals, crops, buying and selling, crafting, baking and cooking among other things will all be available for people to try out.

Minecon 2016 is taking place on September 24-25 at the Anaheim Convention Center, California. We’re very excited for it and really looking forward to meeting some of our community, if you see us there come and say hi!

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New and Improved Cooking

We recently overhauled the cooking and baking system in the game, the new system is a lot more streamlined and intuitive. Originally, the cooking process required the use of several different objects and stations. For example, a kitchen counter would need a chopping board placed on top, and you would then need to equip the knife from your inventory just to chop a tomato. It was a bit finicky and could get confusing quickly, especially for players who were new to the game.

The new systems brings every aspect of each cooking method together into it’s own respective station. So instead of having to prepare an area with a stove and pots specifically for “boiling”, you’ll just have to place down a “boiling station”. This will make it a lot more straightforward when it comes to preparing different dishes from recipes that call for different cooking methods.

There are currently five different cooking methods in Staxel, and as such five different stations. This might be expanded upon in the future but for now here is what you can look forward to seeing when it’s available in game:

• Chopping station
• Boiling station
• Mixing station
• Frying station
• Baking station

As you’ll expect, cooking becomes a lot easier when you’ve got a recipe to hand. There are a few ways to get recipes in Staxel. Firstly, you can experiment! This is one of the reasons we decided to reinvent the cooking system. Experimenting is now a lot more user friendly, and when you don’t have to worry about setting up different cooking apparatus and looking for utensils, it makes it so much easier to use your imagination.

Secondly, recipes can be found throughout the world. You could find one in a chest while exploring or be rewarded with a recipe for completing certain tasks. The only question now is where do you keep them once you’ve found them?

Once you have a recipe in your hands you just have to interact with it and then it’ll be added to your “Recipe Book”. This is an in-game collection screen that you can find under the “Cooking Pot” tab at the top of the inventory menu.

There are going to be a lot of recipes in Staxel but don’t worry about running out of space, the recipe book has more than enough room for all of them.

That’s about it for the new cooking and baking system, I hope it gives you a good idea of what you can expect in the coming updates, but until then why not start thinking up plans and designs for your very own restaurant or bakery where you can show off your cooking skills to your friends!

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That’s it for this issue of the Staxel Reporter. You can grab ‘Staxel – Seedling Edition’ at www.playstaxel.com/store.

Thanks for reading!

–EGadd

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Staxel Reporter – Issue #19

Hey everyone, in this issue of the Staxel Reporter we talk about turning a profit on your farm & the new Ranch Furniture Set!

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Farm Profit

Let’s talk a bit about selling your produce in Staxel, after all, the only thing better than sharing the tasty goods you produce on the farm with your friends, is making some money on the side. Before we get into it just be aware that we’ll only be talking about money you can make from farming in this section, not any other activities that you would be able to profit from.

Crops

This is the obvious place to start. Growing crops undoubtedly takes the longest amount of time before you see a return on your investment, but it will certainly be worth the wait. Crops will more than likely be the main focus on your farm, considering the amount of work you’ll be putting into them! But this isn’t a bad thing. After ploughing, planting, raising and harvesting there’s nothing as satisfying as than seeing all that love and care reflected in their monetary value.

Out of all the possible money-making avenues on the farm, growing crops requires the most planning. You’ll have to make sure you plant your seed in the right season (and make sure you’re not planting them too late!). You’ll have to decide if you’re going to fertilise your crops or not, while this increases the value of the end product keep in mind that fertiliser costs money, and so does keeping animals if you’re thinking of making your own.
Lastly, don’t go getting ideas about creating a turnip kingdom and retiring within a year. Remember, the rules of “supply and demand” exist here, if you grow too much of a certain vegetable, people aren’t going to want to pay so much for it after a while, offer a little variety and your customers will be happy to pay up!

Fruit Trees

This will be one of the easiest ways to make a profit on the farm. Once fruit trees are established, they really don’t need much looking after. That’s not to say you should leave them to their new-found independence, after all they’re still living under your roof! Collecting and selling fruit is really just as simple as it sounds, once you’ve picked all the fruit you’ll be happy to know that they will eventually grow back, so don’t just leave them on the tree because it looks good!

Fruit isn’t just restricted to apples and oranges, you can plant any type of fruit you find while out exploring and grow your own varieties right here on the farm. This applies to bushes too, remember to pick a few berries while you’re out and about, if nothing else you’ll have easy access to recipe ingredients instead of hunting around for that blackberry bush you think you saw once.

Animals

Keeping livestock on the farm will bring you more than just company, if you care for them properly you’ll find out that there’s quite a bit of money to be made when it’s done right.

Each animal supplies you with it’s own type of produce. The three main types from the animals we’re currently working on are:

• Cows – provide milk
• Chickens – provide eggs
• Sheep – provide wool

These all fetch quite a nice sum of money when you come to sell them, but as you’ll expect you could also use these items to process into something else, possibly selling for more! So experiment a little, sometimes the quickest buck isn’t always the best buck…. buck, buck.

In the end, with animals it all boils down to how well you look after them. If you don’t give them proper attention or keep forgetting to feed them you could end up worse off than when you started.

 

Processed goods

The clue is in the name, and although we haven’t completely decided on which items will be considered “processed goods”, they will generally be food items that have been prepared and packaged for storage on the store shelf, or useful items crafted from other produce on the farm.

Mixed some summer berries up for a delicious, fresh jar of jam? That’s a processed food. Spun a ball of yarn from your sheep’s wool? That’s a processed item too. Of course, hand-crafted treats like these don’t come cheap. You need to be compensated for your time and expertise after all, so in most cases you can expect to get a better price for processed goods than you would by selling the ingredients individually, just make sure the time you put into preparing them doesn’t interfere with tending to your crops and animals, or else you could end up losing money in the long run.

And there we have it. You should have a better idea about making some money on the farm, and although it might sound like a lot of hard work, just take it one step at a time and you’ll be fine. If you have any questions or suggestions then be sure to drop by the forums or the Discord! There’s always someone around who’ll be able to help you out.

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Ranch Furniture Set

We’d like to introduce the Ranch Furniture Set! Perfect to pick up for any home, cottage or farmhouse, if it doesn’t have it already!

• Ranch Armchair
• Ranch COffee Table
• Ranch Double Bed
• Ranch Dresser
• Ranch Lamp
• Ranch Loveseat
• Ranch Side Table
• Ranch Single Bed
• Ranch Table
• Ranch Wardrobe

Ahh, you can still smell the sawdust. Can’t you picture it? Coming in after a hard day’s work in the pouring rain, having a hot meal at the solid oak table. Finish the day with a bit reading on the couch and off to bed which, by the way, has a hand made quilt. We found it in the cupboard, nice isn’t it?

To sum up, if you want your home to feel extra cosey and homely, the Ranch Furniture Set might be for you!

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That’s it for this issue of the Staxel Reporter. You can grab ‘Staxel – Seedling Edition’ at www.playstaxel.com/store.

Thanks for reading!

–EGadd

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Staxel Reporter – Issue #18

Hi everybody, in this issue of the Staxel Reporter we talk about placing orders from the Honey.Comb catalogue and chickens!

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Placing Orders

There’s always something you need to get round to buying, be it a new hat, some extra fence pieces or a brand new furniture set to spruce up your home. For all you shoppers out there, Honey.Comb has you covered!

Every villager has a Honey.Comb catalogue laying around somewhere in their home. You use this catalogue to place orders for things you need (or don’t need).

To make use of this ever so handy shopping catalogue you need to place it in your home somewhere and then interact with it. This will bring up the shopping interface with which you can buy ’til you cry!

When reading the Honey.Comb catalogue you can search for goods, view your order queue, see how much money you have to waste on things you really don’t need but have to get before your friends show up for the crop watering “party”.

Ooh I like that groovy armchair, let’s order one! Tap the ‘Order Now’ button, while making sure we have the quantity we want, and badabing badaboom it should arrive the next day. (That’s right, free next day delivery!)

After a good night’s rest, go to your ‘delivery station’ and a crate should be waiting for you! One crate can be delivered per day with a limited amount of space, so make sure to prioritize the right things when placing orders.

That about sums up ordering and receiving goods. I should note that you will eventually be able to go to a store and purchase items as well as order from a catalogue, but for now this is how you do your shopping in Staxel.

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Chickens

You’ll have noticed recently that we’ve been doing a lot of work on the farm animals in Staxel, this week was no exception and we’ve finally got our first look at chickens in the game.

Let me tell you a little about how they’ll work. Bear in mind that all of this is subject to change throughout development. Saying that though, we’re very happy with our current plans!

D’aww, aren’t they cute? As you’d imagine, chickens will supply you with eggs. It’s up to you whether you sell the eggs, use them in delicious recipes or hatch little chicks from them to increase your farm’s overall productivity and cuteness.

Care

They may be small, but they’ve got big hearts! Chickens require the same amount of love and care as the rest of the animals on your farm. You’ll need to make sure they’re fed every day, chickens can be fed with seed or with chicken feed which you can purchase from a vendor.

Staxel’s chickens are a hardy bunch, they have a naturally strong constitution! Basically, chickens don’t get sick. But don’t try and take advantage of this by neglecting their needs. Chickens are sensitive, and when they see that you haven’t been caring for them like you usually do they’ll become sad. A sad chicken won’t lay any eggs until it feels better so make sure to keep them happy and cared for.

Eggs

Selling eggs is the most straightforward way to utilise this commodity, a happy chicken will lay an egg a day. Having two happy chickens will get you 2 eggs a day! You get the idea, more chickens equal more eggs, which in turn means more money.

Eggs can be used as ingredients too, especially in baking. Cooking with eggs isn’t just for fun either, you can sell your baked goods to a vendor for profit, or just give it to someone as a thoughtful gift.

Finally, you might decide to hatch your eggs instead of needlessly spending money on purchasing more chickens. This takes a while longer than buying a chicken and having it delivered the next day, but who can resist the thought of cute little chicks running around the farm?

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That’s it for this issue of the Staxel Reporter. You can grab ‘Staxel – Seedling Edition’ at www.playstaxel.com/store.

Thanks for reading!

–EGadd

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Staxel Reporter – Issue #14

Hey everybody, in this issue of the Staxel Reporter we show off a storage mechanic idea we’re experimenting with and give a general update on some of what we’re working on.

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In-game Item Storage

This week, MoocowTG started experimenting with item storage. We’re trying an unconventional approach here, as you don’t store your items in a 2D UI menu that pops up when you open a chest, but you actually place them on an in-game storage unit! There are some pictures of this below to demonstrate what I mean. I should mention however, that this approach to item storage could possibly change in the future.

This was the first pass on the in-game item storage, testing the concept. It looks great having your items visibly displayed in the actual game world. However, you don’t want to be limited to storing all your items in 2×2 crates, they’d be everywhere!

This is more like it! This is just a standard shelf unit, but it shows that storing items in-game looks great and could arguably replace having to navigate 2D menus for all your storage. You can almost imagine walking into a player made bakery where the shelves are stocked with all their freshly baked delicacies on display.

As you can see here the stack count is now displayed above a stack. This definitely needs some prettying up, but this mechanic has only been worked on for a couple of days. We’ll probably have something pop up when you hover over the item, displaying additional info for what you’re looking at, we’ll have to keep experimenting and see what works well! You’ll also notice that a lot of items look smaller than they actually are when placed in the world, this is pretty much necessary so that you consistently store any of your items in your storage unit of choice.

If we do decide to run with this idea, we’ll be able to do all sorts of different things. For example throw operational doors on some units, chests, mannequins, drawers, display cases. Let us know what you think of this mechanic on our forums, discord, twitter, reddit or facebook!

 

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General Development Update

I thought I’d give you all a look at some of what’s been worked on this week. I won’t go into too much detail about each aspect but this should give you a good idea about a few of the things you can expect to be showing up in the game pretty soon.

We’ve made some good progress with our first in-game farm animal! This was featured in the last Staxel Reporter, but since then the cows have had their animations worked on, and improved AI code is currently being written.

This week we started working on the beekeeping mechanic, and how it’s all going to come together and function in the game. If you’re curious as to how the beekeeping mechanic is going to work, we did an article on it in the Staxel Reporter – Issue #11: Beekeeping & Modding Guide Spotlight.

We’re all very excited for beekeeping and we hope you are too!

As you can see we’ve continued to add more plant life to Staxel, right now we’re specifically working on adding fruit trees. I don’t know about you, but I’m really looking forward to creating a huge, colourful orchard with every type of fruit tree!

We’re very happy with our progress these past two weeks, it’s nice to see another main feature shaping up in the game, and makes us excited about everything else we have planned.

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That’s it for this issue of the Staxel Reporter. You can grab ‘Staxel – Seedling Edition’ at www.playstaxel.com/store.

Thanks for reading!

–EGadd

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Staxel Reporter – Issue #13

Hey everyone, in this issue of the Staxel Reporter we give an update on aspects of Staxel we are currently working on.

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Farm Crops

This week, Conor and Razz have continued adding more variety to the plant life in Staxel! Let’s take a look at what they’ve come up with:

You’ll find berry bushes growing wild as you traverse the world, berries are gatherable so make sure you grab some on your way past. Berries come in all shapes and sizes, so if you take a liking to a particular variety you could always collect a few extra and try growing a few bushes of your own for easy access. There’s nothing quite like having nature’s bounty on your doorstep.

Berries can be sold at a vendor as an easy way to make some extra money while exploring, but keep in mind they also make fantastic ingredients, especially in baking, but only if you can resist snacking on them until you get home.

You’ll notice there are different kinds of trees here. Trees can be chopped down for the wood resource which is useful for building and crafting. On top of that however, some trees also grow delicious produce! Nothing beats an apple pie freshly baked with home-grown apples.
Just like with berries, if you find yourself spending a lot of time traveling to your favourite fruit trees and back, make it easier on yourself and try growing some of your own closer to home.

As you can see we’re still expanding on the selection of crops that will be available in Staxel. We’d like to have a wide variety of plant life for you to grow and discover. If you have any crop suggestions, or any suggestions in general, feel free to post them in the suggestion section on our forums, we check them frequently!

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Farm Animal Progress

We’ve been working on implementing farm animals, and we all voted to start with cows. If you’ve been following our social media you’ve probably seen our progress. It’s been very exciting working on Staxel’s first farm animal, here are a few pictures of the progress from the very beginning:

Everyone starts somewhere, and as you can see here the Staxel cows started as a weird army of mooing people. Hey, it takes all kinds!

As you can see we’ve made a good bit of progress since the mooing people. These cows are happy to finally look like cows… but the sound they make is actually pretty spooky, we’re using a placeholder sound for now.

We’re very happy with our progress these past two weeks, it’s nice to see another main feature shaping up in the game, and makes us excited about everything else we have planned.

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That’s it for this issue of the Staxel Reporter. You can grab ‘Staxel – Seedling Edition’ at www.playstaxel.com/store.

Thanks for reading!

–EGadd

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